Christmas Dinner at the Pier

saintpetersblog.com

This is where friends and I had our Christmas dinner. It's the Pier, in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Pier, an inverted pyramid built in the 1970s, replaced the older Mediterranean pier shown below. Amazingly, the pilings of the "new" pier are already deteriorating, and the city wants to replace it with something entirely new and different.

stpetepier.com

We arrived at sunset, and had fun watching this little boy feed pelicans. Because people can fish at the Pier, the pelicans stay close, waiting for unused bait.

Occupying the whole top of the Pier is a branch of the Columbia Restaurant. I blogged about the original restaurant in a July posting, here.

The atmosphere of the Pier's Columbia is reminiscent of the Ybor restaurant, with dramatic tile work.

It has a gift store that's almost entirely majolicaware.

We enjoyed sangria and excellent Spanish dishes, but saved room to have dessert and coffee at the home of my friends Sandy and Greg.

I hope you all had a happy Christmas

and were able to share with loved ones!

Ybor's Jewel, the Columbia Restaurant

In my last posting, I shared a little history of Ybor City, once home of a large Cuban community. At the heart of Ybor is the Columbia Restaurant, in business since 1905, and today run by the fourth generation of the Hernandez-Gonzmart family.

The Columbia is Florida's oldest restaurant, the first restaurant in Tampa to be air-conditioned (a big deal in 1935!), and today it boasts a modern 5000+ square-foot kitchen.

columbiarestaurant.com

The Columbia's interior still has the ambiance of a 1905 establishment, and it looks as though some of the heavier Spanish furniture might even be original to the building.

The restaurant is famous for its "1905 Salad,"  a hearty meal and customer favorite!

The entire outside of the building is decorated with beautiful antique tile work.

The Columbia Restaurant isn't the only building to boast such beautiful tiles. The store across the street, which happens to be a tile gallery, features the work below:

While this tile has coloration one might associate with Spain or Portugal, the original design is actually by the 19th century German artist, Karl Klimsch.

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